By Joe Smyth, Clean Cooperative

Two reports this month provide new details about the impacts of the high wholesale power costs that Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association charges electric cooperatives in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Nebraska. One of the reports, “How Kit Carson Electric Engineered a Cost-Effective Coal Exit,” was published by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA . . . Another report, “Rural Energy at a Crossroads: Electric Cooperatives Trapped in System Causing High Energy Costs,” was published earlier this month by The Western Way, a nonprofit “urging Western conservative leaders to deliver efficient, pro-market solutions to environmental and conservation challenges.”
Read more here.

Image Credit: Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association

Clean Cooperative’s Recommended Reading

• IEEFA report: Kit Carson electric co-op gains from breakup with coal-centric Tri-State group
• Western Way report: Rural Energy at a Crossroads: Electric Cooperatives Trapped in System Causing High Energy Costs
• La Plata Electric concerned Tri-State debt will lead to higher rates​
• ​United Power seeks solutions to “increasingly outmoded G&T business models”

Related

Mountain Town News: Utility directors in Colorado calculate changes as prices drop, energy concerns rise, by Allen Best, Summit Daily News

Additional Recommended Reading

• Farm Bureau Calls for Quick Passage of Rural Electric Co-op Bill
  Congress should swiftly approve the Revitalizing Under-developed Rural Areas and Lands (RURAL) Act (H.R. 2147, S. 1032), according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. The recently introduced legislation will ensure that electric cooperatives will not jeopardize their tax-exempt status when they accept government grants for activities like expanding broadband or restoring power after storms and disasters.
• Senate Bill Offers Energy Storage and Microgrid Grants for Co-ops, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., introduced the Expanding Access to Sustainable Energy (EASE) Act on April 11. Their goal is to give co-ops and rural communities access to funds and technical expertise from the Department of Energy to identify, evaluate and design storage and microgrid projects that rely on energy from renewable sources . . . The bill was inspired by the success of the Solar Utility Network Development Acceleration project, which ran from 2013 to 2018 and helped dramatically expand the use of solar energy throughout rural America. The project, created by DOE in partnership with NRECA, helped spur about half of the nation’s 900-plus co-ops to offer solar energy to their consumer-members, according to a 2018 NRECA report.
• America’s Electric Cooperatives: Facts and Figures (PDF)